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Ever get the feeling you’re being played? The latest crudity salvo from the Duke Nukem Forever marketing cannon is this ‘babes’ trailer. If anyone was expecting a chauvinism climb-down following the controversy around the optional bottom-slapping in the ‘capture the babe’ multiplayer mode, they’re certainly not getting it. The following video is just about safe for work, but it is entirely, consciously puerile.

I see what you did there. Controversy is being courted, and at the same time the reductive approach to gender is trying to be pushed so far that it could only be considered open satire (the belching and toilet flushing at the start of the video is but the first giveaway that Gearbox are baiting the world with this video). Satire of what, I’m no longer entirely sure. Of the game itself, I guess. Which raises the question of where DNF’s worth really lies.

Well, for me it’s all about whether it’s a decent game or not, on levels far beyond the surface headline-courting. I’m certainly no fan of the “lol, boobs” approach, even when tongue in cheek (and I feel slightly annoyed with myself for having posted this trailer because of that), but only to the extent that I just find it kind of boring. Neither the titillation or the humour works on me.

“That being said, the oldschool-ness of Duke will be a bit of a double edged sword. In a way, backtracking to find that particular door you missed earlier or banging your head against simple puzzles brings back the kind of challenges we didn’t realize we’ve been missing after years of smooth, more linear campaigns that make us feel like action stars as we constantly just press forward and onward with minimal frustration. But it’s also a reminder of why we may not see games like this anymore these days.

During one boss fight, we faced monstrously obese alien raining rockets on us from above. We tried fighting him the way we might approach a boss in a Halo game. Every time we tried to stand up to him face-to-face, dodging his attacks and blasting him whenever we had a free moment, we died. In the end, we kited him into a narrow hallway where we let the boss kill himself by crossing over a series of trip mines we laid out before him. It felt cheap, like we were cheating. But you know what? It also felt great at the same time. Because that’s exactly the kind of thing we used to do to beat old Doom bosses or to clear areas in a Serious Sam game, the kind of thing that fits perfectly in the world of Duke Nukem.

The action itself also felt rough at times. It should be noted that we were still playing an early build of the game, but there were times when firefights made Duke Nukem Forever feel more old than oldschool. Sometimes we found it hard to keep enemies in our sights as they bounced about the screen jerkily.”

The only part of the 2 page preview thats more screenshots than words that covers gameplay and we’re treated to fervent attempts to spin old tired gameplay and poor tech as good, mainly via use of nostalgia. “We liked shitty key card hunts damnit!” is not glowing praise.

Yeah.. “This boss has shitty, broken AI that you can exploit and force it to kill itself! That’s old-school and great!” is a whole heaping pile o’ bullshit, and pretty much confirms that the game is going to be as bad as it looks.

Even back in the 90s, I was complaining about how shitty FPS bosses were, and how much better those in 2d console games are, too. Nowadays… most bosses in all genres are shitty, but there’s still a few companies that can get them right.

Well, I remember an old boss in Doom, the Cyberdemon. There was really no way to beat it in a straight fight. The only way was running away, and slowly drain him down with missiles. (45, not counting misses). That’s clearly old school, but I wouldn’t mind having to fight him again.

Meh. I’d rather have “broken” AI I can play around with than a boss fight that’s 99% scripted and will always play out the same way.

It’s called EMERGENT GAMEPLAY, people. Something too many FPS games can’t be arsed to do, so it becomes “oldschool” after a time. Not everything that’s “oldschool” is praised exclusively for it’s nostalgia value: some things were always the better way to do it, and too many people missed the lesson. This is why the term exists in the first place.

EDIT: Bioshock 1 and 2 are good examples of games that actually do implement “oldschool” FPS and adventure game mechanics. Instead of rushing in guns blazing, you set traps, you sabotage their traps, you turn their allies and gadgets on them, you trick them into thinking you’re going one way before doubling back, you use your weapons and toys in combination, etc. This sounds like what was described above.

Well…this probably is more realistic than anything else for any real-life Duke Nukem manly rockstar fame types. Being approached by scores of bimboes, that is. So I don’t know anymore what to think…satire, gratuitiousness (is that a word?), realism..my head is spinning.

29 seconds in, and there’s the flash of the graffiti in the background “They Live. We Sleep”, a reference to John Carpenter’s Frankfurt-School Marxist Parable They Live. Maybe it’s all a commentary on how media carnification of the female body form is lulling the middle class into complacency with their destruction at the hands of the rich capitalist overlords. You know. Duke drinks beer, checks out babes, has a good time, rather than throwing bricks at that shit.

It wasn’t really stolen. 3D Realms never claimed Duke coined those phrases. The players all knew those films. It’s like saying Bruce Campbell stole the Three Stooges slapstick. That the “They Live” grafittii is there is a heartening sign for me.

While I am also tired of the whole “lol, boobs” thing, I think Duke Nukem is basically the only game out there that can get away with it, or be allowed to wallow in this kind of thing. I would be happy if God of War and all the rest just quit the whole women-objectifying thing and pushed it all into this one misogynistic bomb every 12 years or so.

Maybe Gearbox will delay DNF again to appease one overly sensitive gaming journalist and edit out all the naughty, naughty stuff. If The Witcher 2 guys bowed, I guess anything is possible. Thank God I will be safe from possibly considering Duke Nukem the voice of reason about how I should treat women.

Yeah, really. It’s Duke Nukem for fucks sake. What did you expect. And Duke Nukem’s not going to turn anyone into a chauvinist who wasn’t already one. RPS is starting to sound like Fox News whenever DNF comes up.

Actually these overwrought reactions smack of insecurity. I can play and possibly even enjoy the intentional crudity of Duke Nukem without feeling the need to wring my hands every 5 seconds saying “oh, how chauvinist! oh, how juvenile! oh, how utterly above all this I am!”.

Maybe RPS is just pandering to the set who need to constantly remind themselves of how sophisticated and enlightened they are lest they forget.

If you don’t MIND things being crude for the sake of being crude, that’s your prerogative. Some people don’t like it. Some people find it offensive. I know I’m not pandering to anyone when I call footage like this trash. I find it either bland, annoying, or repulsive depending on context. Here I just find it bland.

On the other hand, I don’t think you can excuse sexist media by saying “It’s Duke fucking Nukem, get over it!” Duke Nukem is not causing 13 year olds to objectify women, and certainly isn’t going to change the gender-based attitudes and prejudices of the 20+ crowd. But while I can understand arguing that it’s more a symptom than a disease and by itself mostly harmless, I don’t buy that it’s satire of anything other than Duke Nukem and I damn well don’t buy the “it’s ok because it’s Duke” argument. There are so many sexist tropes lurking around in our media, and they perpetuate themselves readily because we sometimes forget that they discriminate; they demonstrate the same mindset that makes it easy to get caught in a middle ground where few people are blatantly misogynous but the social pressures that prevent equal standing between men and women doesn’t happen either.

Again, I don’t think Duke Nukem is going to make gamers into misogynous, womanizing cretins. But if you’re going to enter the discussion about whether or not the sexist content is “ok” I think you have to realize that expecting sexism from a certain source doesn’t make that sexism “ok.” I expect sexism to occur at my home counties town meetings involving certain members of the county commission. That doesn’t make it acceptable and doesn’t excuse the effects it has on their policy making. In context, even “not ok” sexism in Duke Nukem probably won’t cause any damage to gamers let alone society. But that’s not the same as it being acceptable. Because when we accept it, we become extremely susceptible to the things that are genuinely damaging. We are consistently terrible judges of our own prejudices and how much the media we consume and the people we listen to can shape our actions in spite of our intellectual ideas about a given subject.

Play your game. Have fun. Ignore the sexism. That’s perfectly fine; you’re probably right to think the game is relatively harmless, especially if you don’t play it because you like to see women objectified but rather because you like “crude” humor in general and like the gameplay. But when defending it, please don’t defend it because it’s “expected.” I think that attitude is a major part of the argument against all blatant sexism and such in media. It’s insidious and it keeps a foot in the door for more broad spectrum ideas about women in the practical world. It’s not the portrayal of women that’s the worst part of this. It’s how accepting people are of it.

P.S. I would like to stress that I don’t think everything has to be “politically correct” and that there is a time and context for most otherwise unacceptable statements. I think the tone of Duke Nukem sounds to be so outlandish that it diffuses a lot of cut it could have. But it doesn’t seem new. It’s the same hyperbolic humor from before. I think that takes away from the contextual view of the game and shoves us more in the direction of pure content, which, in the ads, is just hypermasculine, sexist, trash. It’s the difference between being refreshingly irreverent and being an asshole. I’m not always into the former style of humor, but I understand the argument for why it can be ok (South Park attacks everything with equal irreverence, for example; it often goes too far for me to enjoy, but I respect that it overall doesn’t much lean towards attacking a single group, let alone a socially marginalized group).

But this is a retread. As a game, it seems unoriginal and trying very hard to pander to the fans of the first game. The pandering aspect sort of takes away from the “everyone is so uptight, but these guys just want to chill and make trashy jokes” argument.
Moreover, in the advertisements, most of the “refreshing irreverence” is directed at women. That’s not refreshing. At all. Mostly it’s boring, but it’s also offensive. I’m sure the full game lands somewhere between refreshing irreverence and blatant offense, if you sit from end to end. But the advertising, much like the bullshit EA pulled for Bullestorm, doesn’t feel interesting, refreshing, or anything other than boring hyper masculine trash. It’s so redundant to me that I don’t really take it seriously or find it hurtful, but I also can’t shake the feeling that it’s trying so damn hard that it must be taking itself seriously. It’s really struggling to be irreverent. And it’s desperately lashing out at easy, socially prepared targets rather than making it’s own politically incorrect mash-up for people who enjoy crude humor and feel like being nice to everyone all the time is boring and makes you up-tight.

Which is sad, because it sounds like the original felt like that last part of that sentence to a lot of people. And maybe it would have felt like that to me. It sounds like at the least it had solid, fun gameplay when it came out. Hopefully for the fans, this one does too.

My take on this is to not at all be offended by this sort of content, but not to really get anything out of it either. It’s like all the American Pie presents films.. Rather than focusing on the ‘comedy’ of sexual situations they’ve simply become excuses to see tits at the expense of any substance or indeed comedy.

Am I supposed to find it sexually appealing? The mentally vacuous “stripper with huge breasts” ‘type’ isn’t exactly what I’m into, so fail there. Am I supposed to find it funny? Well I’ll reserve judgement until the game, but this video doesn’t really show any parodycomedic element to the sex other than the fact that it’s sexist (comedy revolution there, huh), so it looks like a fail there too. Will it contribute to gameplay? Doubtful. Will it contribute to story? Doubtful. All it’s there to do is to coin Duke’s character, which is likely made abundantly clear by the first one-liner of the first sexual situation.

The sex in Duke 3D was (if I recall correctly) just stuff you could observe while you passed through a level. If the sex in this game takes up your time with unskippable cutscenes etc, unless there are some completely unexpected and comedic twists to the situations, I have a feeling it will just come off as weak, uninspired content.

@gwathdring
I don’t know quite what to make of all this constant Duke-outrage. It is clear that some of you are taking Duke far more seriously than its creators ever intended it to be taken. And I’m certainly not going to be lured into an actual discussion about sexism in our society.

That’s the thing, though – you are creating a real discussion where there is need for none. To my understanding Duke Nukem is a self-aware franchise. You and Alec are treating this game as if it’s designed to indulge the worldview of crude, sexist knuckle-draggers. It’s not. You are not getting the joke.

Duke is supposed to be tastelessly over-the-top and offensive. That’s the whole point. It is meant to amuse you by virtue of how ridiculous and juvenile it all is. Duke is very much tongue-in-cheek. No, it isn’t any sort of clever, biting social satire, nor is it intended to be. It’s not meant to make any sort of point – which is pretty much the difference between a “spoof” and a “satire”.

I think you realize all this, and yet you don’t, not really. You acknowledge it in passing yet in practice you continue to treat it with the utmost stone-faced, socio-analytical seriousness as if you are completely oblivious to the nature of the franchise. There’s some sort of weird cognitive dissonance going on here that I’m not sure I have either the time or the ability to analyze. My only ideas are thus:
Consciously or unconsciously:

1: You feel the need to prove to others/yourself that you are sophisticated/whatever by voicing objection to Duke, or (1b) you feel that since Duke is offensive and immature, not eagerly pointing that out would make you somehow complicit in tolerating offensive attitudes.
2: You believe in some sort of moral code which disapproves of offensiveness even in obvious parody form.
3: You do indeed believe the game may actually end up reinforcing or creating sexist attitudes, and oppose it on those grounds.
4: You genuinely cannot comprehend the nature of humor – something which is impossible to explain but natively understood by most humans. You are viewing the game through the eyes of an autistic with a social conscience.

It certainly isn’t simply that you don’t think it’s funny. (Hell, I don’t think it’s all that funny.) No – you seem to find it genuinely outrageous, not simply “lame”.

I can’t speak for anybody else but I’ll have a 3 and a 1b (If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem), but not 1a.

I reject 2 on the basis that Duke Nukem only wishes it were a parody, and I reject 4 on the basis that, while I like to think I have quite a good sense of humour, saying “It was just a joke” does not excuse being a dick.

On “getting the joke”.. I am absolutely aware enough of gaming and Duke to acknowledge the tongue-in-cheek intentions behind it, but is the reality of a game which is sexist or puerile “for fun” any different to a game which is sexist or puerile because its creators actually are? If Duke can get away with all this as a joke (seemingly) without actually injecting irony or wit into the content to differentiate it from the genuinely crass, then that kind of justification can be used for anything and everything. Want to put gratuitous rape in your film? No problem. See how ridiculous it is to put this in a film? That’s the joke! Har har!

It seems to me that the assumed intentions of the creators are not a sound basis to judge the content of the work on, as many who come into contact with it will not be aware of its background. The work itself has to communicate anything it wants to be judged by.

I’m not saying this content should not be in a game.. I actually stand by the idea that art is precisely the place where any and all questionable content belongs, because it can then be observed, considered, discussed, enjoyed, hated, etc without physically occurring.

My issue is this: If you want to claim that sexism in Duke is justified, saying it is so because it is “a joke” is a very weak justification. It’s either OK to have sexism in a game or it isn’t. Using comedic intent as a criteria is very shaky ground as obviously that intent cannot be apparent to everyone. Comedy offends people all the time. You can’t make offensive comedy and then claim that the people who are offended are at fault for “not getting it”.

If you stand by its right to have this content then you must stand by its right to be offensive.

I got a useless sociology degree from uni, so I do know media and cultural attitudes effect people and foster stereotypes. The difference is that in Duke’s case these attitudes are not presented at all realistically or persuasively. One could argue a movie like Animal House presents a pseudo-realistic portrayal of college life that fosters that kind of behavior in future college students, but Duke Nukem is fucking Duke Nukem. As Grape says the whole point of it is to be insanely over-the-top and hyper-sexual/hyper-violent. I suppose it is not strictly satire, but it is the macho man persona taken to the heights of absurdity for fun and amusement. Searching material like that for reasonable, realistic or wholesome portrayals of women is about the stupidest this you could do, and rightly so.

I get upset at bikini models selling my beer, or on the flip-side buff and shirtless men selling my wife perfume, like any good liberal should. Stuff like this though is insane for a reason, and for fun, and acting like you’re above it and it’s wrong in some way just makes you look stuck-up and pretentious, in my opinion. Like people who buy green products and electric cars more so they can point that out than because they care about the environment.

Of course I stand by “the right to be offensive.” The idea that anything offensive to anyone should be banned, shunned or hidden away makes me want to vomit.

It doesn’t surprise me some people have this view though. The media perpetuates it with their 24/7 stories on poor innocent people who were offended by something and how wrong that is. On top of that we have the assholes I mentioned in my last post who seek to constantly prove their maturity, intelligence and (let’s be blunt) liberalism by going above and beyond to prove how not racist, capitalist, offending, consumerist or insensitive they are.

There are people on television telling me retarded needs to be the “r-word” now, even though retarded has a real definition that means something, it’s just slang for certain types of disabilities. So what if some people use it as a tease or insult? People can use anything as a tease or insult! It’s insanity… it’s political correctness gone haywire and to the extreme. Anything, no matter how well-intentioned, can be taken to a bad extreme.

I’m with you there – I believe that when it boils down to it, “being offended” is a purely egoic thing and is essentially self-invited “suffering” that is indulged in for gratification and to justify further indulgence in addictive emotions such as anger, all the while projecting the blame for this indulgence on the offender. A good dose of Buddhist Nirvana, among other things, can cure this disorder.

Of course, it’s somewhat understandable to be offended when someone directly attacks or insults you (although it is still ego ultimately), but being offended by a word regardless of context, etc, is quite ridiculous.

I hope you two realize there’s just as much public attention to all of the people actively attacking and debasing individuals based on their various sexual identities, races, genders, etc. To say that the media plasters us with needy, whining people who can’t take the heat and ought to get out of the kitchen is to ignore … a lot of media.

I’m a little disappointed. Point 4 is extremely rude and close minded. We can disagree about what is funny and what isn’t, and what is fun and what isn’t without me being mentally or emotionally deficient.

Your presumption is quite wrong. I “simply don’t find it funny”. Really. I spend a lot of time on the internet and off talking to people in depth about things I don’t find important. I find discussion itself interesting and enjoyable on most subjects. I don’t mean to take it particularly seriously and apologize if I’ve been confusing on that point.

I am no more trying to prove myself by posting here than you are by posting in response. Neither of us is aware of our unconscious motives so neither one of us can say that is or isn’t part of this. I personally don’t believe in a complex unconscious liked Freud’s which contains things like “I want to prove myself by showing I’m not sexist,” rather I think the unconscious is less pre-frontal-cortex-ish and more about conditioning/sensory response/habit. Back to Duke.

As stated above, I don’t think the game is damaging or important. It reinforces sexism insomuch as it includes negative stereotypes, regardless of intent. I will confidently say it does not reinforce with any significant strength that will effect gamers or society. I will say with equal confidence that an entire gaming culture filled with the elements in Duke Nukem would have an effect. So does Duke counteract the reinforcement with some ulterior motive or even just a diffusive air of humor? I don’t find it funny, so for me it doesn’t work via the latter. I also think it’s redundant and lacking refreshingly brazen content leaving it both boring and mildly offensive. Whether or not I think it’s a big deal, the only notable effect Duke has on me is irritation.

Mostly at this point I’m curious. What makes Duke different, makes it worth attention and defense, makes it less worthy of irritation than beer and perfume commercials. Those are often also intended to be fun or amusing. I don’t see a distinction. It’s such tired material. I wonder: what makes it compelling?

Finally, I’m fully aware that the advertisements are not the game, and my comments are based solely on awareness of the ad campaign.

I’ll just pop my Pop-Psychology hat on for a moment here… I get the impression that Duke’s rampant flaunting of his (hetero)sexuality at every opportunity and his over the top machismo are merely a pretence to the world. He’s trying to compensate for something here, or to throw us in the wrong direction in regards to his true sexuality. Yes, that’s right… I believe Duke is in the closet. His (very phallic) Cigar that he is constantly carrying/chewing/salivating over is another give away. Hell, just look at him… give him a moustache and he’s a Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen) character… the boots, the skin-tight denim, the vest, the crew cut, the military-fetishistic accessories. Duke is as bent as a 9 Bob note.

I’d love to see this actually revealed in the game. Hell, make Duke come out Samus Aran style at the end of the game. Rescues all the women (or whatever the point of the game is), and some tart comes up all seductive to him, and in that horribly over the top raspy silly voice Duke responds, “Sorry babe… but I’m gay. Seriously? You didn’t know?” It would recontextualize the entire series. All those double entendres are now just straight forward comments, and anyone attracted to the game to play some fantasy machismo womanizing tough guy will realize that they just played… well a fantasy machismo gay tough guy. Worlds would collapse. Tom of Finland indeed.

@BAREFOOT
Er … both from the article you posted and from prior knowledge of XYY, I would like to point out that most people (the link you posted says 97%, and I don’t remember a stat from genetics) have no symptoms. There is also more of a connection to learning disabilities than to … rape and murder … which are not empirically connected with being XYY. People with XYY even have normal testosterone levels.

Non-disjunction in (the cause of excess sex chromosomes) isn’t that uncommon primarily because the most common forms of these events don’t cause problems in most people and those that do cause problems don’t even lead to viable embryos let alone unhealthy individuals. XXY causes even fewer difficulties than XYY because mammals can shut down extra X chromosomes in a cell (hence why women don’t have the issues associated with too many genes being expressed despite being born XX). So more risky than XXY … but where the hell did you pull rape and murder out of?

Was I “picking on the trannies”? No, quite clearly. Someone else brought it up, and I expanded on a joke made elsewhere in the thread that Duke’s gender is in doubt. If that’s picking on the trannies then I’m sorry but the trannies need to sack the fuck up. And yes, saying that trannies need to sack up is also funny.
Seriously, piss off. There’s so not enough here for the faux-moral outrage you’re spewing. I’ll be sure to watch out for you, you crazy troll.

No, what I was picking on with you specifically was your hurt feelings entitled whine of “Clearly we aren’t allowed to make fun of transsexuals.” You know what? You aren’t. You really aren’t. You show me some (more than a token 1 or 2) positive media portrayals of trans people and I’ll accept we can be fair game. Until then, no, piss off, all you’re contributing to is an overwhelming global culture that OKs the utterly shocking amount of violence done to trans people. The first thing I was picking on, however, is that even when you -do- deign to acknowledge that we exist, and it is -exclusively- to mock us, it’s the same joke every time. The same one! It’s like we’re not even worth the effort to mock properly so you just trot out the same shitty macho-man with random feminine attribute every single time. Frankly, I think such a piss-poor one joke repertoire from most cisgender people on earth ought to be mocked, so I will.

Fuck you, nobody gets to accuse me of condoning violence against innocent people. It was an innocent little mock of Popular Game Character that you’ve decided to assault as everything that’s wrong with the society that you’re so convinced shuns you. That isn’t my problem, dude, I was just making a little joke. That doesn’t make me part of some “global problem”, it doesn’t make me fair game for your insane vitriol, and it doesn’t make me complicit in acts of violence against transgender people! Get real!

I’m not even going to approach your whole “make a better joke” thing because frankly I’ve got no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. If you think a joke isn’t funny then move on, don’t pontificate that BECAUSE YOUR JOKE ISN’T FUNNY YOU’RE COMMITTING A HATE CRIME!

The difference between you and me is that while I was just mocking a fictional character for having gender issues in the face of overbearing machismo, you’re literally accusing me of condoning and contributing to real life acts of violence against an oppressed minority. You’re the asshole here and that’s totally unfair, so fuck off.

You’re a head case, and this is totally insane, seek help. Psychopath. #thatisall

No, because you’re talking crap. I understand exactly what your point is – you think by making jokes that involve the word “tranny” i’m complicit in persecuting transgender people – I just think it’s a load of bollocks. There’s nothing to “get through”. Thanks for playing.

That would probably be because I don’t condone it, and I wouldn’t stand for it if it happened within any distance of me, and I’d defend to the death peoples’ right to behave in more or less any way they choose so long as they don’t infringe on anyone else’s right to behave how they choose in the process. I wouldn’t dream of permitting or performing any kind of discriminatory act against an individual on any grounds and being told that I’m complicit in violent discrimination makes me pretty upset, to be honest. Making a joke does NOT equate to reinforcing or supporting that discrimination. It’s just a fucking joke. If you’re so insecure about your position that you think your group should be off the table then all you’re doing is discriminating against everybody else who you think *should* be fair game. The attitude that one’s own group are somehow above being poked fun at is fucking disgusting and shameful. And making that joke does NOT condone abuse or discrimination against that group. Saying it does doesn’t make it so. I can say by brushing your teeth you’re contributing to el nino but it doesn’t make it so, and seeing as you haven’t bothered to give any argument for why that’s the case I’m perfectly comfortable sticking to “no it doesn’t” and “what makes you think you can accuse another person of committing or condoning violent acts against the person, you horrible shit”

There was something about how transgender people don’t get “positive media portrayals” (who does?) but that’s about it. And if I’m goading you it’s only because you’re goading me – lets’ not forget who made the first derogatory comment as you’re so clearly keen to with all this backpedalling

I appreciate your passion on this one, but you missed the point. I can tell because it clipped your hair. I’m not making fun of transgendered people. I’m making fun of duke nukem, lol boobies, and the frat boy mentality.

off hand, I’m an attorney in texas, I spend my pro bono time doing name changes and ancillary issues for transgendered people.

I love how it’s somehow Bilbo’s job to convince Serenegoose of something when Serenegoose is the one who came careening in here all red-faced, flailing arms and caps lock keyed to accuse him of bigotry for making if anything, a mild joke. It’s just so much richer because it’s in a thread about Duke Nukem (of all things) and the default topic is shamelessly objectifying women.

Beyond that, grow a thicker skin. You are who you are, and no one else is obliged to bend over backwards and dance on your command to not step on your apparently raw and very delicate sense of self worth. No one needs to convince you of anything because you won’t be convinced of anything. You’re here to wield some moral trump card you’ve granted yourself as a weapon and when that doesn’t work you decide to equate some mild mockery with violence.

Try not being a bully if you want people to respect who you are. And if you can’t deal with that and insist on getting gravely offended by the internet … then to paraphrase you: Boo. Hoo.

Wow everyone rips on everyone now-a-days. Serengoose, your pathetic. If you are trans-gender by choice; you are damn strange and well, you should be mature and intelligent enough to accept that oddities like yourself will be ridiculed, directly or by proxy. If by nature, stop taking off-hand comments by random internet commentators who clearly don’t know you as a personal jibe.

I think they are both in the wrong. Bilbo should simply have said ‘sorry it wasn’t my intention to offend you’, but Serengoose shouldn’t have got so aggressive about it. So, whatever.
Somewhat related, I once saw a 6 foot 6 transvestite with massive tits and a huge handle bar moustache. If they weren’t the coolest person on earth I don’t know who is.

you know i used to be one of these people who’d always go on about being conciliatory and reasoned and measured in their responses to callousness or stupidity. then i realized that callousness and stupidity are in many ways the opposite of the former. darkness is the absence of light. so on the contrary, bullying and beating with a big stick really probably is the best method of getting a point across.

if you’re not stupid or overly prideful, the method of imparting wisdom shouldn’t really bother you too much before you decide to come around. this includes both the beater and the beatee.

Breasts aren’t usually censored in Japanese porn, just genitalia. That aside, the better question would be, will there even be an opportunity to have breasts be censored in DNF? Or will it all just be a tease?

It’s fine. Duke is just Duke, a machismo character straight out from a late 70s-80s movie with big guns, big steroid muscles, ridiculous brush hair and a craving for big breasts. Was already the case in duke nukem 3D btw and there’s nothing shocking in it, or the world has gone mad.
I find kinda weird that some people raise an eyebrow when trailers like this one emerge about a parodic game/character, but are a-okay with Dragon Age 2 having released entire dev sneak-peek about sex/romance related content during the marketing campaign.

Expecting boobs and gross humor in a duke nukem game seems far more sensible to me than trying to turn a rpg in a dating simulator. But who am I to judge,. Lol, Boobs.

Lol boobs is about all I could think after that.
It wasn’t really very hot, or very interesting.

Or for that matter, very offensive I thought. Yeah, it’s sub-playboy level fantasy pandering. But thats kinda what I was expecting. It’s dumb, it’s not presenting at all believable characters – but then you could say any of those things about the Duke himself.

Hmm, I see yet again more people suggesting that Duke Nukem is meant to be a satire parody. I’ve never seen any suggestion that this is the case.

LOL, i love the new Duke for being just as Political Incorrect as the old one. Nothing annoys me more than 30+ old nerds on a crusade against “sexism and homophobia” in computer games. Gaming is NOT serious business.

There is such a thing as worthwhile or even meaningful bad taste. The (good) films of Mel Brooks for example or Shappi Korsandi whose entire act is based around that wierd white middleclass racism you get.

Then theres Duke Nukem which comes out and makes jokes that were made years ago. Not offensive. Not challenging. Not even in bad taste. Just pathetic. Like Jim Davidson.

There is only one rule: Nobody has the right to get special treatment and not to be made fun of. No exceptions. Not even gay black Jewish foreign baby girls whose fluffy puppy just splattered right in their faces.

Making fun of some group is not discrimination.
Taking some group out of that fun-making, is discriminating all others though.

And by the way: Treating some people better than others is not wrong. We all treat our friends better. For obvious reasons: Those people are called friends because they are good for us.
What’s really stupid though, is treating people badly that are good for us, because of some delusional prejudice (aka ignorance).
But that’s really way far off of making fun of things.

Yeah, the actual sexism here is more pathetic than offensive. In general I’d say that sexism in video game content is a smaller problem than sexism among video game players.

But let’s be honest here–the point of Duke Nukem’s sexism is a combination of fantasy indulgence and being “provocative” just to show that you don’t care what other people think. And that’s where some of Duke’s fans become most pathetic–if you kids are so proud of how you don’t give a damn what feminists say, why are you so pissed off at what feminists say? This game is outright trolling and baiting people who care about sexism, and doing so in a completely passive aggressive way.

@Barefoot, you can tell whatever jokes you want. And the rest of of us are allowed to think less of you for it.

It is true that a 400 polygon boob with jiggle physics is more satisfying than a meagre 100 polygon boob rendered in the Source Engine. The Alyx Vance boob is a mere shadow compared with that of more recent, geometrically gifted specimens. I should also like to see how the latest Unreal Engine iteration handles side-boob.

I haven’t seen anything in these videos that seems like anything more than silly roleplay. There is a mile wide gap between “here are some sexy ladies” and stuff that is actually sexist, and with all these statements from Mr. Pitchford I believe that that Gearbox will very likely stay on the right side of that.

Agh, this is so annoying. I need to see the game. I need to see whether it actually parodies this shit or only pretends to parody it. There’s a difference, and everyone talking about it is just too much white noise!

I find the idea that a grown man can’t enjoy silly shit like this incredibly pretentious. There is a lot of fun to be had in the absurd. When I played through Bulletstorm did I want to be the main character or start talking like him? Of course not, but there is a lot of fun to be had in the idea of someone screaming “dicktits” and blasting holes in mutants while drinking a beer. It’s ludicrous and crass and amusing as hell because of it.

Take 300 or Sin City. Both films crank the machismo, ultraviolence and female objectification knobs to 11, and yet both can be enjoyed by adults as harmless indulgences in adolescent mentality or exercises in pure style. Duke Nukem’s problem is that it seems to think that it’s transgressive: “ooh, look what we did in a video game”. Same problem the terrorist mission in MW2 had. And most of us have outgrown that phase where we stifle laughter behind our hands after saying ‘pussy’.

It’s good to see badly rendered bojangles wobbling around in all their low-poly, clipping through each other kinda way. I used to love Eurotrash on TV when I was younger, because it was the only programme that had tits and stupid sexy humour, I’m rather hoping the Duke scratches the same itch.